


And Even Without Clucking Like A Hen, Everyone Gets Noticed Now And Then

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 07:56:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1771534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the 0 prompt at 1_million_words numbers challenge. Mike and Mona both know what it is like to feel that they are nothing. Together, they no longer have to feel this way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Even Without Clucking Like A Hen, Everyone Gets Noticed Now And Then

Their teacher had been telling Alison off for talking in class one day, and had said “Miss DiLaurentis, since you don’t need to listen, maybe you can tell the class what is meant by absolute zero.”

Alison had smirked and said “The number of friends that Mona Vanderwaal’s got.”

As all Alison’s little acolytes had burst out laughing, Mona had just wanted to crawl under her desk. If Mona had said the same thing about Alison, she would have expected to have been turfed out of the class. But because it was Alison, their teacher had just said “That will do, Miss DiLaurentis,” and given her the explanation she would have had if she had been listening.

A few days later, when she’d started calling Lucas Gottesman a hermaphrodite in front of everyone, Lucas had said to Mona that one day Ali was going to pay. Mona had just nodded along with him, not letting him know that she was already thinking of ways in which she could do that. She’d been watching Alison, trying to figure out where to start. She’d envied Paige McCullers, that day when Paige had kicked Alison in soccer and managed to pass it off as an accident. Mona was perhaps the only person that knew it definitely wasn’t, because she’d been watching Paige. Sometimes it was an advantage being ignored by everyone else in their class, because it gave Mona the opportunity to watch people without them realising she was doing so. Paige had had the courage in that moment to take action against Alison, and it made Mona realise that maybe one day, she could do the same.

Alison and her friends had always made Mona feel like she was nothing. Now she realised that she had a way of showing the clique that she was somebody after all.

 

Anyone else would have completely forgotten about being missed in roll call. Mike’s tutor had explained it away as having forgotten him because he’d only just come back from Iceland. To anyone else, that would have been something stupid that was shrugged off straight away. But to Mike, even something as small as that just reinforced his feelings that he might as well not exist.

He should have realised that nothing was going to be the same once he came back from Iceland. Just look at Aria. Mike knew she hadn’t talked to Hanna or any of her other friends the entire time they’d been there. But in the end, it turned out that Aria reconnected with her crowd almost straight away, while Mike never felt like he truly fitted in with his friends.

They’d even forgotten that he was coming back. He’d gone round to see his friend Lewis when he’d got back and all the old gang had gone out of town to some game or other. Then when he did finally meet up with them, they’d talked a lot about people Mike hadn’t met because he’d missed freshman year at Rosewood High through being in Iceland. There had been so many conversations that he couldn’t contribute to, and he wasn’t sure his friends understood that. Gavin had made some comment about how Mike didn’t have much to say for himself, and a part of Mike had really felt like punching him. Over time, it had become easier to avoid his group of friends.

And he didn’t even have his family to rely on. Aria had brushed him off when he’d first realised their parents were fighting. What did she think, that he couldn’t take it? His family was falling apart before his eyes, and no one was taking the time to talk to him about it. He’d found out about Meredith through hearing them all yelling at each other, for Christ’s sake. Did no one care enough to talk to him about it directly? And then this whole Fitz thing with Aria. It sometimes seemed like it was all Aria, Aria, Aria, and Mike just didn’t exist. Was it any wonder he didn’t want to be around his friends and family any more? 

Mike had come to the conclusion that he didn’t fit anywhere any more, not with his friends, not with his family. When everything had come out about Mona, Mike had kept it to himself at the time, but there was a part of him that could sort of understand how she’d been feeling. He knew he could never tell anyone what he was thinking. Aria was his sister, for fuck’s sake. And he knew that Mona was responsible for the letter signed A that had told Ella about Byron’s affair with Meredith, and therefore had played her part in the disintegration of his family. By rights, he should hate Mona, and one part of him did, yet another part of him identified with how alone she must have felt when Alison ostracised her, when Hanna pulled away from her. He knew what it was to feel alone around the people who supposedly loved him.

 

Mike and Mona both knew what it was to feel that they were nothing. Together, they could show the world that they did matter after all.


End file.
